Tuesday, September 15, 2015

15
September 1972 A.D.Geoffrey
Francis Fisher—99th of 105 Archbishops of Canterbury; (near
retirement, his counsel about a successor: “I have come to give you some advice
about my successor. Whomever you choose, under no account must it be Michael
Ramsey, the Archbishop of York. Dr Ramsey is a theologian, a scholar and a man
of prayer. Therefore, he is entirely unsuitable as Archbishop of Canterbury”)

In 1914, Fisher was appointed Headmaster of Repton School, succeeding William
Temple who was also later to be Archbishop of Canterbury.
Fisher married Rosamond Forman, the daughter of Arthur Forman who was a Repton master and Derbyshire cricketer.[1] Among his pupils at the school was Roald Dahl, who went on to be a highly acclaimed children's author. In Boy, his autobiography of his childhood, Dahl wrote scathingly about Fisher's
use of corporal punishment, but Dahl's biographers later showed that Fisher had
left Repton by the time of the events Dahl described.[2]

Appointment of bishops in the Church of England is,
ultimately, in the hands of the Prime
Minister. Winston Churchill disliked Temple's politics but accepted Cosmo Lang's
advice that Temple was the outstanding figure and no one else could be
seriously considered. This time, however, the situation was less clear-cut. It
has been widely assumed subsequently that George Bell was passed over because
of his criticism in the House of Lords of the obliteration bombing strategy. While it is
probably true that this greatly reduced any chance of Bell being appointed, it
is not in fact clear that Bell was likely to be appointed anyway. Temple had
apparently regarded Fisher as his obvious successor.[citation
needed]

Archbishop of
Canterbury

Fisher put considerable effort into the task of revising
the Church of England's canon law. The canons of 1604 were at that time still in force, despite being
largely out of date.[citation
needed]

He presided at the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and later at her coronation in 1953 as Queen Elizabeth II. The event was carried on
television for the first time. (The previous coronation, in 1937, had been
filmed for newsreel.)

He is remembered for his visit to Pope John XXIII in 1960, the first meeting between an Archbishop of
Canterbury and a Pope since the English Reformation, and an ecumenical milestone.

Nuclear controversy

In 1958, at a time of heightened fear of nuclear war and
mutual destruction between the West and the Soviet Union, Fisher said that he was "convinced that it is
never right to settle any policy simply out of fear of the consequences . . .
For all I know it is within the providence of God that the human race should
destroy itself in this manner [nuclear war]."[4] He was also quoted as saying that "The very worst the Bomb can do is
to sweep a vast number of People from this world into the next into which they
must all go anyway".[5] He was heavily criticised in the press for this view, though a number of
clergy, including Christopher Chavasse, Bishop of Rochester, defended him, saying that "In an evil world, war
can be the lesser of the two evils."[4]

Successor

Fisher retired in 1961. He advised the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, that he did not consider Michael Ramsey, who had been his pupil at Repton, a suitable successor.
Ramsey later relayed to the Reverend Victor Stock the conversation Fisher had with the Prime Minister.

I have come to give
you some advice about my successor. Whomever you choose, under no account must
it be Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of York. Dr Ramsey is a theologian, a
scholar and a man of prayer. Therefore, he is entirely unsuitable as Archbishop
of Canterbury. I have known him all his life. I was his Headmaster at Repton.

Thank you, your
Grace, for your kind advice. You may have been Doctor Ramsey's headmaster, but
you were not mine.

Ramsey was duly appointed.

Retirement and
death

Fisher was made a life peer, with the title Baron Fisher of Lambeth, of Lambeth in the County
of London (Lambeth being a reference to Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury).
By this time, appointment to the House of Lords as a peer had become a convention for retiring
Archbishops of Canterbury (none had ever retired before Randall Davidson in 1928), although Fisher was the first to be created a life
peer following the Life
Peerages Act 1958.[7]

Lord Fisher died on 15 September 1972 and was buried in a
crypt in St Andrew's Church, Trent, Dorset, which he had chosen during his lifetime. A side chapel
at Canterbury Cathedral was subsequently dedicated to his memory, situated next
to a similar memorial chapel to Archbishop Michael Ramsey.

Legacy

Literary references

One of the most famous and controversial literary
accounts of Geoffrey Fisher is detailed in the book Boy: Tales of Childhood written by Roald Dahl, a former pupil of Fisher's at
Repton. The book recounts in some detail, a brutal beating of a fellow student
at the hands of Fisher, who is named in the book as the person responsible.[citation
needed]

Dahl alleges that the victim was ordered to take down his
trousers and kneel on the Headmaster’s sofa with the top half of his body
hanging over one end of the sofa. Then as the beating took place, he states
that in between each "tremendous crack administered upon the trembling
buttocks", the headmaster would light his pipe and lecture the kneeling
boy about sin and wrongdoing. At the end of the beating, a basin sponge and a
small clean towel were produced by the Headmaster and the victim told to wash
away the blood before pulling up his trousers. The details of this beating were
later corroborated by Dahl's peers, and he also claimed that the incident
caused him to doubt religion and the existence of God.[citation
needed]

The accusation against Fisher was extremely controversial
at the time and led some to investigate the claims further. It was later
discovered that the headmaster responsible was in fact Fisher's successor John
Christie, who was appointed headmaster in 1933 after Fisher left the school to
take up his position and bishop of Chester. Also, whilst records suggests that
brutal beatings of this nature did occur, it would appear that they were very
rare. In this case, the victim was an 18-year-old who had been abusing younger
boys at the school.[citation
needed]

From written records produced by Dahl during this period,
it does not appear that he held any animosity towards Fisher at all, and his
naming of Fisher as the person responsible for the beating was a case of
mistaken identity. However, writing more than 50 years after the event
occurred, Dahl attributed the beating to Fisher, as he regarded him as a
sanctimonious hypocrite, stating "I would sit in the dim light of the
school chapel and listen to him preaching about the Lamb of God and about Mercy
and Forgiveness and my young mind would become totally confused. I knew very
well that only the night before this preacher had shown neither Forgiveness nor
Mercy in flogging some small boy who had broken the rules.[citation
needed]